Work!

Rachel writes:

Those of you who work full time are going to wonder what I am fussing about, but I have just started a couple of part time jobs for the first time since my kids were born and boy am I noticing the impact on the home life.

When my oldest son was born, I was in the fortunate position to be able to quit my full time work and stay home with him. Over the years I have had several occupations, from teaching childbirth classes to selling kitchen tools, but all of those gigs have been in the evenings when my husband was able to watch the boys. Once the kids started school, I had my days free.

In the last couple of weeks, I have started 2 very part time jobs during the day. These are mother's hours jobs which get me home in time to pick the kids up at school. On paper, it seems like this should have no impact at all on the family life, right? I mean, how hard is it to juggle home and work when you are only working a couple of shifts a week?

Surprisingly, I am finding the impact to be much greater than I expected. All the things I used to do during school hours, like grocery shopping, paying bills, cleaning the house, etc, are squeezed into less and less time. The afternoon rush of picking up the kids, supervising the homework, getting dinner going and getting ready for all the things I still do in the evenings is really exhausting, I have to say.

I am extremely lucky that my work is in areas that feel meaningful to me. But I am going to have to learn how to balance all this on the home front.

How about you? How do YOU manage the work-home balance? I'd love to hear from those of you who work full time, too.

Audrey adds:

Boy Rachel, I know this feeling. I've always worked on a contract basis and controlled the hours I work. When my kids were little and I unavoidably had days with 3 different work appointments and found myself rushing to get home to greet my the bus and make supper, I found I had no physical, and little emotional energy for parenting. All I could manage on those days was getting the kids fed, and then making it through homework and then bedtime. Any small glitch or behavior problem seemed almost insurmountable. I remember thinking that this is what moms who work full-time paying jobs go through every day! I feel very lucky that my children's' father earned enough for me to work part time, though we always lived very simply.
As an aside, this is why I cannot believe that along with raising 4-5 kids, and running a city, then the state of Alaska, Sarah Palin says that she also ran 7-10 miles a day. I know the days can be long up there, but I'm pretty sure that they get the same 24 total hours we have in the lower 48.
I would also love to hear from full-time moms out there. Are you all drinking 10 cups of coffee a day? What does 6pm look like at your house?

1 comments:

Sanket responded on June 21, 2010 at 3:25 AM #
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